


Alone

by Anonymous



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-04
Updated: 2011-02-07
Packaged: 2017-10-15 09:06:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/159251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anon-prompt asked for "Bec Noir made it to the veil and left one troll of your choice alive, bonus points for Sollux/Aradia hearing all their dead buddies." Now includes follow-up prompt for a different anon, who asked for "fic in which Equius is treated as a serious character".</p><p>Aradia awoke to green flames and a black shape flying away. It took her a little time to follow him. Too much time, some might say.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This might be cheating a bit, but hey (I can't decide if it counts for Karkat or Aradia, so I'll leave that to you (:B). Actually AU from [S]Wake, I guess.

She wandered through the silent halls of the asteroid, following the trails of bright red droplets. Sometimes they mixed with a different colour- blue, green, yellow, teal- but mostly they wove their way alone, unevenly paced, zigzagging along grey floors, converging and separating at junctions along the way. Some of the trails led to explosions of coloured blood, splattered across walls and ceiling, before backtracking. Some trails led to blacked expanses of passageway, but eventually they always backtracked.

Always, though, the blood and burnt patches were nearly the only sign anyone had been there. Once she found a piece of red chalk, and once she found a single fang, and once she slid in a puddle of purple blood and put her hand on what she thought might have been a magic wand but was now a mangled pile of splinters, but that was it.

She thought she was used to silence, thought she had learnt to cope with it, but this wasn't right. The asteroid had never been silent, not for this long, and it was... scary, she supposed. Abruptly, she abandoned the trails, heading for the one place she knew someone would be. The computer room always had at least one person in it.

In fact, they were all there, still and bloody and dead, but no longer silent. Terezi sat against a wall, red glasses crazed but carefully balanced to hide blinded eyes, her cane across her lap, and she screamed of defiance. Sollux leant against another wall, Feferi resting on his shoulder, and they whispered apologies and comfort. Kanaya lay on the floor, curled around some kind of sphere, and she cried for a future lost. Equius and Nepeta leant on each other, back to back, and reassured each other they would always watch out for each other. And on a chair, on the far side of the room, someone raised their head. She almost didn't recognise him, face mangled and horns cut away, but there was only one person whose blood colour she didn't know and the bright red covering his t-shirt and skin was kind of a giveaway. He watched, expression unreadable under blood and wounds, as she crossed the room to stand in front of him, and all the while the dead spoke of loss or whimpered of surrender or laughed at death.

"you... made it back... then," said Karkat, living voice cutting through the voices of the dead, and he laughed, weakly and hysterically. "sorry... got to laugh. maiden of time and... you're too late. hilarious. one last fucking joke at... my expense, i guess." He sounded breathless, weakened somehow, and yelling seemed to be beyond him.

"What happened?" she asked, and the voices returned, a vortex of screams and hatred and sorrow to tell her of a demon a destroyer wreathed in green flames an enemy too strong hatred and rage. For a moment she recalled her awakening, green flames and a black shape flying into the sky.

"jack happened," said Karkat, and laughed again, shrill and high-pitched. "that makes it sound... like nothing happened. maybe nothing did happen. maybe they're alive... and i just think i'm sat here... talking to their corpses. heavy imaginary corpses. or maybe... i really did let them die. maybe... i let them down, couldn't stop him. maybe he thought it... was funny, to leave me with them. maybe he thought i'd die fast enough anyway. maybe he thought i wasn't worth the... effort. maybe he was right." His laugh was broken by the voices of the dead as they tried to reassure him even though he couldn't hear them, and by a red trickle of blood that seeped slowly from the corner of his mouth. "but anyway. he... left. i brought them all here. didn't want... them to be alone. think i broke something... trying to move tavros's legs. couldn't leave him... without them, could i?"

He fell silent, briefly, lungs heaving. "glad you're here... didn't want... to die alone." The trickle thickened, as he laughed soundlessly. "equius would... be so irritated to know... i've been a filthy mutant-red-blood all this time... telling him what to do." The last sentence he spoke was so quiet, she had to kneel and lean in to hear it. "sorry... guess i was... a terrible leader." He gasped, tried desperately to breathe, failed. Kept trying, until his lungs stilled and his voice joined the dead, a wail of apology and sorrow for letting them down.

Aradia stood up, made sure Karkat was secure and wouldn't fall out of his chair. She said, in both apology and promise, "This will n0t happen", took a final look around the room, and gathered her power to her.

And time span backwards


	2. Do Not Go Gentle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was funny how much time he had to think as he was dying. He would rather have died alone, but they were moirails and so it was only fitting she be here at the last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Argh, so very sappy and angsty. Also very difficult to write after the very recent updates, which pre-empted me and did it better than I could. Still.

There was something wrong here, Equius thought. Maybe it was the way his knees refused to hold him up. Maybe it was the floor. He was sure it was meant to be grey.

A low growling somewhere behind him pulled his attention away from the mystery of the suddenly blue floor. Nepeta was still here, even though he was sure he had told her to leave the room immediately and find somewhere to hide. He frowned, trying to recall why he'd told her such a thing and why she'd defied him. He was sure there'd been a conversation with someone panicking. Karkat, he thought. Something about he was here, about death and green and black, mixed in with the kind of gutter language Karkat liked to use. Equius was sometimes convinced the useage was purely to wind him up. had suspected some kind of trick this time, but the tone of Karkat's typing had convinced him otherwise.

This time his moirail hissed, ferocious and furious at someone. His moirail. It was a funny thought, that. She'd once thanked him for being the best moirail a cat could pawsibly hope for and he'd frowned and pointed out that surely it was the other way around. As he recalled, she'd grinned and replied that that was true too, but if a certain silly blood obsessed troll hadn't spoken to her fur-st, she'd probably be a feral troll by now, hunting anything that moved. Surely that made him her moirail just as much as the other way round, she'd said. A silly thought, but even now, oddly warming.

Movement drew his attention away from his musings and he blinked and tried to focus through black cracked lenses. A figure he could recognise as Nepeta only by the combination of blue and grey and green ran towards him in a blur, and stopped just in front of him before sagging to her knees. A black figure was revealed, stood behind her. That was right, he thought. Karkat had been trying to warn him about Jack Noir. Only it was too late, the prototyped abomination had already found them, and he'd stepped forward between Jack and Nepeta. He'd made the mistake of looking over his shoulder at Nepeta, who still smiled at him, and he'd told her to run and hide and, unspoken, to live, and he'd promised her he'd see her later as he turned back around, but Jack Noir was already there, sword running a murky rainbow of colours blending together. He hadn't felt the pain then, but now he remembered, he could feel it burning through his stomach.

Equius also now felt a weight resting on his legs. The world was a smear now, and he couldn't see who it was but that was fine, he knew who it would be with him here at the end of it all. He lifted a hand, and the weight of it was like lifting the world. His STRENGTH had gone somewhere, ran away like his blood and oddly enough it didn't really matter what colour your blood was on the floor, he thought. Neither thought mattered now though, and he let them go. It was probably even for the best his STRENGTH had faded away, unnecessary for the last task he had in mind; Nepeta was hurt enough, no need to hurt her more now. For the first time in his life, he could touch someone without fearing to break them, and so he did.

It took him nearly a painful eternity to reach out and, carefully even now, wrap his hand around her paw. For a moment, she managed to return the grasp.

And they fell into the darkness beyond together.

**Author's Note:**

> This might be cheating a bit, but hey (I can't decide if it counts for Karkat or Aradia, so I'll leave that to you (:B). Actually AU from [S]Wake, I guess.


End file.
